Monday, January 16, 2017

WhatsApp backdoor? Should I be worried?

WhatsApp Backdoor!!! 

Let's start this blog entry with that title and it is very easy to get reader's attention (Especially in the security community) with big bold letters and saying that there is a backdoor. I say this because it was exactly what happened on January 13th (Friday the 13th, maybe it is correlated) when The Guardian released the news. After that, the security community/websites and others started a big debate about it. In fact, some hours after the release from the Guardian others websites started saying that it isn't a backdoor such as: Gizmodo, Open Whisper System blog and others' websites.

Well, we are going to give some "conclusions about the subject" later. First, let's explore more about it.

What is a backdoor?

If we talk about computer systems or cryptography, we are going to have something like this definition: "A backdoor is a method, often secret, of bypassing normal authentication in a product, computer system, cryptosystem or algorithm etc. Backdoors are often used for securing unauthorized remote access to a computer, or obtaining access to plaintext in cryptographic systems." In other words, it is an easy way to obtain access.

Are backdoors common?

Unfortunately, yes it appears in the news and computer systems more than we want. Also, after the Snowden revelations the term backdoor is very common in the non-academic area. However, it does not mean that people become more worried.

What is the real problem?

Perfect, we learned about backdoors. Now, let's explain the problem with WhatsApp. Let's see an hypothetical case, imagine that you have a smartphone and for some reason (fall in a lake, you have been abducted by E.T. and forget your phone in the spaceship) you don't have access to your smartphone anymore. Fortunately, you can recover your phone number, buy a new smartphone and reinstall Whatsapp. However, when you reinstall WhatsApp, it generates a new key. However, now we have a problem what the app should do with the messages that you received when you were offline. The app could just drop the messages and never deliver or it could ask for your contacts to encrypt with the new key. According to the Guardian this approach is the backdoor:

I, personally, say that it is a mistake that WhatsApp just show a notification saying that the key change and automatically resends.

Is it exploitable?

I will say: Yes, it is.
Let's see how it is possible to exploit.

In fact, it consists in exploit another vulnerability, it is present in the SS7 protocol. The Signalling System No. 7 (SS7) is a set of telephony signaling protocols developed in 1975, which is used to set up and tear down most of the world's public switched telephone network (PSTN) telephone calls. It also performs number translation, local number portability, prepaid billing, Short Message Service (SMS), and other mass market services.

The SS7 vulnerabilities are known since 2008. However, it had the attention from media in 2014, Tobias Engel at CCC showed how it is possible to exploit SS7 vulnerabilities. You can check exactly how in this link. In the video, he shows that it is possible to change the phone number between cellphones. In the same congress and right after Tobias, Karsten Nohl showed how to read "others SMS", the talk can be followed in this link.

What is the SS7 vulnerability?

Let see very quickly the structure of a GSM network, the next figure shows it.

So, if you are inside of the SS7 network, you can just start listen the network and as we saw in the videos it is possible to change somethings such as your number.

Since it is possible to change your number and the verification from whatsApp can be done by call or a SMS verification. What happened if I have access to SS7 network and change my number to any other number and I reinstall WhatsApp and pass the verification?

According to the policy of WhatsApp, my smartphone is going to generate a new key and all the new messages are going to be encrypted with this new key. I didn't create a new attack here, it has been done before as this youtube video shows:

It is valid to say that this attack can be used in others messengers. However, others apps have another policy, e.g.  Signal drops the messages until you "recheck" the new key.

 If you are interested to see the how messengers handle this key problem, there is a nice blog entry at Medium.


The news from Guardian is not a real backdoor, it is a known problem about handling with keys and the news was more like a "click bait". However, the good thing about all of this history are the discussions in different communities and an alert to people take care about their privacy.

All this incident makes us to start doing some social and technical questions, such as:
Should we accept the news from the media as truth?
Why the hell we continue to use a system from 1975?
Can we create a better way to handle with keys?

 In addition, I should say that if you are looking for more privacy to your life. You should check Privacy Tools, in this case, the section about "Encrypted Instant Messenger".

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